In offices, homes, automobiles and in other locations or equipment which use advanced electronics, one or more central processing unit devices (CPU) or microprocessors (MPU) are employed. Local area networks (LAN) are used to interconnect these processors and related peripheral devices.
In order to interconnect the peripheral devices and the LAN data bus, a large number of I/O (input-output) connectors are used. One example of this type of I/O connector is that described in Japanese Patent Application No. 407169 [1990]. This type of connector is explained briefly below with reference to FIG. 5.
As shown in FIG. 5A, the data bus of LAN 100 has two main paths or conductors 101 and 102 and, in this instance, CPU 103 is connected to it. Peripheral devices 104 and 105 are selectively connected to bus conductors 101, 102 via I/O connectors 106 and 107, respectively.
The I/O connectors 106, 107 used with this LAN 100 could be configured as shown, for example, in FIG. 5B. Data bus 100 is configured with conductors 101, 102 in the form of shielded cable 110. Plug connectors 120, 130 are connected at fixed positions to the cables. Although not shown in the figure, each plug connector 120, 130 has two receptacle contacts and each is connected to signal conductors 101, 102 of the shielded cable 110. These plug connectors 120, 130 can be inserted into the plug connector compartments 141, 142 of the cap connector 140. Latch arms 121, 131 formed on each of the plug connectors 120, 130, latch with and are fixed in the latch sections (not shown in the figure) in the inner walls of the compartments 141, 142 of the cap connector 140. The latches may be formed, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication NO. 3-50622 [1992].
A pair of mutually linked contacts 150, 160 includes two pairs of tab contact sections 151, 152 and 161, 162 which extend into compartments 141, 142 from the rear of cap connector 140. Each of the contacts 150, 160 have connection terminals 154, 164 extending downward from the central portion of the coupling sections 153, 163 which connect the tab contacts. These connection terminals 154, 164 are connected to peripheral devices 104, 105 by, for example, being soldered to a printed circuit board. Of course, if necessary, the insulation housing 145 of cap connector 140 can be fixed to the above noted circuit board by a screw or other such mounting hardware.
In the I/O connector system shown in FIG. 5B, the shielded conductive wires 101, 102 form the continuous data bus 100 in FIG. 5A by connecting with the shielded conductors 101, 102 of plug connectors 120, 130 via the contacts 150, 160 of cap connector 140. It is also easy to see how it is possible to simultaneously use connection terminals 154, 164 of the contacts 150, 160 of cap connector 140 to configure a tap or shunt in order to connect peripheral devices 104, 105 with data bus 100.
Electrical contacts for electrical connectors are generally manufactured by a process of stamping metal sheets usually made of a copper alloy. With prior techniques, in order to obtain the contacts 150, 160 described above with a process of stamping them from strips of metal sheets, a large metal strip of sufficient width has to be used to stamp out the tab portions 151, 152 (161, 162), the coupling sections 153 (163), and the connection terminals 154 (164). Subsequently the connection terminal section 154 (164) is twisted along with the main section to form the final contact 150 (160). However, as is evident in FIG. 5, when forming contact 150 (160) this stamping process when used with previous technology has the disadvantage of requiring the scrapping of a large portion of the metal strip and consequent high cost caused by this poor efficiency in the utilization of materials.
Consequently, the purpose of the present invention is to provide an electrical contact that can be manufactured efficiently and inexpensively using extremely narrow metal strips and forming the contacts from these metal strips with the previously noted stamping process.
Furthermore, an additional purpose of the present invention is to provide an electrical connector that can be used effectively with LANs such as described above where multiple electrical contacts such as described above are utilized.